Prize for Literature

The 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, cited by the Swedish Academy “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt, and defeat.” Vargas Llosa belonged to the so-called boom generation of writers who emerged in the 1960s and focused international attention on modern Latin American literature. First and foremost a storyteller, he was a prolific and accomplished novelist, short-story writer, dramatist, journalist, and essayist. One of the preeminent writers of the Spanish-speaking world, he was the first Peruvian to be named a Nobel laureate in literature and the first Latin American writer to win the prize since Colombian Gabriel García Márquez and Mexican Octavio Paz, in 1982 and 1990, respectively.

Vargas Llosa was born on March 28, 1936, in Arequipa, Peru. His parents separated at about the time of his birth; as a result, he spent part of his childhood with his mother in his maternal grandfather’s household in Cochabamba, Bol., and then in Piura, Peru. After his parents reconciled, the reunited family moved to Lima. At age 14 Vargas Llosa was sent by his father to the Leoncio Prado Military School, a traumatic and often painful experience that informed his debut novel, La ciudad y los perros (1963; The Time of the Hero, 1966), about coming of age. He completed his undergraduate education in Lima at the Main National University of San Marcos and continued his studies abroad at the Complutense University of Madrid. His first collection of short stories, Los jefes (1959; The Cubs and Other Stories, 1979), was published first in Spain and was awarded the Leopoldo Alas literary prize. Determined to pursue a career as a writer, Vargas Llosa left Madrid for Paris, where he joined a community of Latin American writers that included Argentine Julio Cortázar, Chilean Jorge Edwards, Swiss-born Cuban Alejo Carpentier, and Mexican Carlos Fuentes.

Published in 1966, his novel La casa verde (The Green House, 1968) received critical praise for its striking inventiveness—notably, its complex narrative of five independent stories that introduced what would become familiar themes in his body of work: the abuse of authority, disillusionment, the preponderance of violence and brutality, and the anguish of human suffering. He further enhanced his reputation with the publication of Conversación en la catedral (1969; Conversation in the Cathedral, 1975), a political exposé of contemporary Peruvian society; La tía Julia y el escribidor (1977; Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, 1982), a semiautobiographical novel of improbable romance; the epic historical novel La guerra del fin del mundo (1981; The War of the End of the World, 1984); and Historia de Mayta (1984; The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta, 1986), a disjointed portrait of a failed revolutionary that explores the boundaries between fact and fiction. Later works include El hablador (1987; The Storyteller, 1989), a novel that underscores the plight of the marginalized indigenous populations of Peru; the erotically charged Elogio de la madrastra (1988; In Praise of the Stepmother, 1990); and the highly acclaimed La fiesta del chivo (2000; The Feast of the Goat, 2001), a searing condemnation of dictatorship. His major works of nonfiction include critical studies of García Márquez, Gustave Flaubert, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, and Victor Hugo; El pez en el agua (1993; A Fish in the Water, 1994), a memoir written after his unsuccessful bid for the presidency of Peru in 1990; and the eloquent Cartas a un joven novelista (1997; Letters to a Young Novelist, 2002), a meditation on the craft of writing.

Early in his career, Vargas Llosa posited literature as “a form of permanent insurrection.” Its mission, he proclaimed, was “to arouse, to disturb, to alarm, to keep men in a constant state of dissatisfaction with themselves.” As a writer, he merged literature and social commitment, and his youthful idealism defined his later literary persona. The product of a vibrant and impassioned cultural inheritance, he found it impossible for himself—or any Latin American writer—to avoid the subject of politics: “Literature is an expression of life, and you cannot eradicate politics from life.”

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